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carnival of the agilists, 1-mar-07

February seems to have been a quiet month for agile bloggers everywhere! Nevertheless, this issue of the carnival consists entirely of agile-related Britblogs. Here are the seven posts that gave me the most to think about during the last month:

In When is Scrum not Scrum? Tobias Mayer challenges some of the orthodoxy of Scrum and recommends alternative practices (all of which have worked for me too); full marks from me for reminding us all that agile methods themselves need to be agile in a changing world.

Dan North has sketched a great idea to automate some aspects of exploratory testing: RMonkey will use keywords such as ‘usually’, ‘sometimes’ and ‘rarely’ to introduce an element of randomness into the behaviour of a test script. Contact Dan if you can help out with RMonkey’s development.

Have you read Simon Baker’s Agile Zealot’s Handbook? No? “Then you have compromised your agility!” The ‘handbook’ is a clear and forthright re-working of the (ideas behind the) agile manifesto, and now I’ve seen it I’ll be using it as my preferred rolled-up newspaper. And for the historians, Pragmatic Dave Thomas has unearthed some of the notes he made at Snowbird during the 2001 “summit” meeting.

Are there any obvious signs that the company you work for is never going to be agile in a million years? Rachel Davies has started a list of anti-agile patterns. It would be hilarious if it didn’t give me nightmare flashbacks…

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, because Jason Gorman wants to tell you a story about the villagers of Goaltown and Metricsville, who conspicuously failed to do the simplest thing that could possibly work.

Okay, now that you’ve been sitting down for a while – take the ARSE test. Mark Levison riffs briefly on the “No Asshole Rule”, and at greater length on the agile-sounding Rules of Engagement at SuccessFactors.

At my time of life this is becoming an important consideration. (I wonder if my barber will shave my project estimates too…?)

Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions for this edition of the carnival – please keep ’em coming. If you have something that you think is worth sharing – especially from a blog we haven’t featured before, send us a link by emailing agilists.carnival@gmail.com, or use the carnival submission form. All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website.